Tanks.. answer me this.

[Prototype]

I have always been a Fan of Avoidance.. I always stack the parry/Stam or Dodge/Stam gems. I am Hit cap, Expert Cap, Def Cap.. etc..

So here is the question;

why is it i seem like the only tank that likes avoidance (among my servers tanks that is).. I see DK's/warriors/Pallies/Druids stacking Just Stam. (30 stam epicS) and i mean ALL gems



do i not need all the avoidance that i stack up?

31411 ub, and 58% avoid ub...24.5karmor while others are stacking stam...i stack avoid/stam.... should i Stamstack?

[Krumgork]

There's different reasons for all of these.

As far as my understanding, stamina is better because it's there all the time. You might avoid a hit xx% of the time, but stamina will always be there. You can only avoid physical hits, but stamina is always there.

People mainly stack stamina when they're doing progression kills for their guilds & maybe hard modes (which are probably progression anyway). It makes life a lot easier on the healers because the extra health gives them room for error.

As far as your stats, it doesn't look much different from others I've seen. 31k health sounds fine to me, depending on where you are. And if you're focusing on a melee boss, maybe the avoidance will work out for you.

In the end, it's best to have all sets covered for the boss you're fighting. Stamina, threat, avoidance, resistance, etc. Just like you would switch specs for a particular boss, so should you with your gear.

[Hengist]

Avoidance provided by your talents and item bonuses alone is very high in wotlk. Most people consider that amount being good enough to have a good chance of providing your healers with some breathing space between chaining heals and don't see the point of stacking it any higher, especially that for magic damage stamina is the only stat you can stack to increase your chance of survival.

[Daereg]

Well avoidance is nice but, it doesn't seem worth gemming for considering the amount you get per gem. Where Stamina would get you a lot more per gem.
Talents and gear itself gives enough avoidance I find.

[phaze]

do i not need all the avoidance that i stack up?

Not really. Avoidance is great for efficiency, but Stamina stacking is better for boosting survival.

[Krumgork]

Yeah, I didn't think about that, Phaze.

Somewhere, on some math planet far, far away, someone crunched ridiculously difficult numbers to decide that every tanking stat was worth a certain amount.

In the end, I think stamina won out as the highest value tanking stat. Since then, tanks have been stacking stamina like mad men. I'm sure if you look hard enough (WoWHead?) you can find the breakdown of how the stats rank in order of importance.

Or I could just post it here:

Stat Importance According to WoWHead for Prot Warrior (with point value per point):

Stamina - 100
Defense - 66
Dodge - 59
Expertise - 58
Agility - 53
Parry - 50
Block - 22
Strength - 17
Hit - 7
Armor - 7
Crit - 5
ArPen - 5
Attack - 3
Haste - 3

[Prototype]

interesting... Hit is not important.. interesting... Good chart tho thx

[Athenodorus]

A couple things to keep in mind:

(1) The true value of each stat will vary depending on how much of each you have. We talk about the "defense cap" every day: the simple fact that defense is worth (much) more until you hit 540 skill. Similar things happen for Expertise, Hit Rating, etc. Diminishing returns on Dodge and Parry rating add another layer of complexity.

(2) That list seems geared for Time To Live, rather than Average Healing Needed or Threat. Tanks are mostly concerned with TTL, especially in new raids, but it is important to remember the other two exist. What you need depends on the target and your raid makeup.

[Ricovega]

avoidance is massively important. although stamina is a vital stat that we should look to increase, especially for improving survival against spell damage, avoidance should never be comprimised at the cost of stamina, which alot of tanks do. non-tanks also see a higher stamina figure as being better when in reality the tank could be a glass/paper tank

when it comes to gemming, its important to work on increasing threat production

hit is important. obtain a hit rating of at least 145 and expertise rating of 26 for a streamlined threat production and efficiency using the optimum rotation

[Tharr]

Avoidance is awesome, but you need stamina to survive. Untill you have enough hp to feel comfortable with whatever the boss does to you then you need more. But when you have enough then you can start looking for other stats, avoidance/hit/exp. That's how I see it atm anyway.

[Odwome]

Up until this patch I was a super stam whore. I used to have about 35-36k unbuffed before 3.2 hit, since I would usually just stack stamina as much as I could, but I realized that I was gimping myself pretty hard.

With the amount of stam I had, any additional stamina barely helped me out in terms of actual survival, since I could definitely take 2 hits from the harder-hitting bosses in uld, but no way would I survive 3 in a row without heals. At that point, I figured that adding more avoidance would be beneficial, since it would allow me to reduce the chance of taking 3 hits in a row, which was typically the only thing that would kill me (aside from obvious encounter-related mistakes).

If your total avoidance is 55% (disregarding block for this example, trying to keep it simple), then you have a 45% chance to be hit once in a row, a 20.25% chance to be hit twice in a row, and 9.11% chance to be hit 3 times in a row. Increase that avoidance to 60%, and the numbers drop to 40%, 16%, and 6.4%, respectively.

Assuming you're in a situation where you will always survive 2 hits in a row, and never 3 hits in a row (let's say your healers are lagging really hard >_>), then given those numbers, you would decrease your chance to die at any given moment from 9.11% to 6.4%, which is just about a 30% decrease.

Let's carry this example further. Imagine you could increase your total avoidance to 65% after buffs. That would give you a 35% chance to be hit once, a 12.25% chance to be hit twice, and a 4.29% chance to be hit 3 times in a row. From the original value of 55% avoidance, this would be a decrease in your chance to die from any given string of attacks of approximately 53%.

I got this interpretation of avoidance from Satorri's post in the theorycrafting forum which compares the different tanks. It made me realize that, when you base your evaluation of avoidance in this manner, you will see that increasing your avoidance DRASTICALLY increases your survival, much beyond the simple amount of damage from the attacks that you otherwise would not have avoided. Instead, it shows that avoidance's ability to reduce and spread out bursts of damage is its most important factor, not the averaged reduction of total damage taken.

[Prototype]

I am at 56.02 ub with 32131hp

i was 58 minor.. we'll see how it works out

[Jameak]

With the higher end gear available, you are able to re-gem for stamina without your avoidance suffering. What makes me cry is people picking up the high stamina gear with little useful stats/sockets over gear with avoidance. 34k hp might look great but 18% dodge, 15% parry and 14% block brings tears to my eyes.

[uglybbtoo]

Your avoidance will eventually fail dodge/dodge/dodge whack

It's nice to have but when it fails ignore other stats at your peril and the buck always stops at your HP.

You also run the risk of becoming very spikey with too much avoidance you lul the healers into sleep and then all the sudden you get belted. The easiest tank for a healer is nice consistant damage not the one who takes the least damage but the damage all comes in bug chunks.

Around 45-50% avoidance is sort of normal but some will go higher or lower depending what they are doing in terms of raid content.

There is no right and wrong here ... if it's working for you fine but yes the ones loading stam aren't wrong either.

[Dhalphir]

Avoidance is what comes on gear. Your gems should be tailored towards threat for farm content, and stamina for progression.

[Viggo Vickers]

I myself used to favor Avoidance, I had my Def up at 570 something, with large amounts of Dodge and Parry. But the Stamina stacking way of Tanks currently swayed me to stacking Stamina, and I'll be honest, I've never looked back, I'm glad I did it.

My guild has progressed a lot further into Ulduar in the last few months and we certainly would have had a harder time on Mimiron and Hodir if it wasn't for the huge amounts of health you can get with Stamina stacked and raid buffs, in fights where Avoidance has no place.

At T8 level, you can safely stack Stamina and still have a healthy chunk of avoidance from stats on your gear.

[Feralizer]

I have been openly made fun of in raids (pugs mind you, not guild raids) for wearing the polar set gemmed out the butt for Stamina. To the un-informed it may look like I'm a stam stacking nub, but I will say this: Even in my stam stack "soak" set, I am almost exactly 40% dodge rating, which goes with the theory that the stacking of gems for stamina does not necessarily detract from your avoidance if your other gear is high ILevel.

Basically, stack stam until it hurts. Then back off a little.

[Sirloinsteak]

i think we are compltely rulling out the fact that u should probly have a diff tanking set for every boss ... there is no one set that will be awesome for all bosses u need to customise ur gear for every encounter ... thats why they have mods like itemrack and such ... am i the only tank who will take 2-3 of the same T8.5 pieces and gem and enchant them differantly ???? i thought this was just standard rules for tanking ?? i dont think i have worn the same set for multipul bosses ever every boss has diff abilitys and diff mechanics .. why would u wear the same gear for all that ... it makes no sence at all

[Tankz]

Larger hit point pools means more of a "pool" for healers to heal in to. Stam is indeed the best way to go for progression as a warrior, DK or Druid.. not so much for a pally, iirc its BV.

[Ghladum]

Two juxtaposing things I'll submit for consideration:

1.) The removal of Crushing Blows makes EH much less important. Gone are the times when a drastic spike could sneak its way into your face. Gone are the times of clicking open the combat log after a nasty wipe and feeling the blood drain from your face as you saw the dreaded "(Crushing)" there for all to see in WWS parses. There are almost ZERO times in current content when healers cannot deal effectively and efficiently with unlucky strings of taking direct hits assuming the tank has suitable gear. (The exception here I believe is hardmode Vezax, which specifically punishes EH tanks).

2.) EH is still very much the sexy standard by which most tanks view themselves. I even belong to the EH school. I gem Stam absolutely as much as I possibly can. HP pool is our most visible indication of gear level. Even among guildies, it is only a very urbane and knowledgeable RL that will not discriminate between two tanks if one of them has 33k and the other has 36k HP.

So I'm a hypocrite - I believe Avoidance is the smarter decision in 90+% of situations that raiding tanks face, yet I will not gem and gear for avoidance.